In the beginning of the pandemic, COVID-19 was said to be “the great equalizer”, impacting people across all walks of life. Now, well-documented racial health inequities for COVID-19 have proven otherwise, and it shouldn’t have been a surprise. Racial inequities have been found for nearly every health outcome. The evidence suggests that once you strip away the protection that newly-arrived immigrants initially carry, Black, Brown, and Indigenous Canadians in particular experience worse health outcomes than White Canadians.
Our fourth Essential Solutions Project report tackles a truth few have been willing to acknowledge: these worse health outcomes are rooted in economic racism, which is the long-standing economic inequality built from our nation’s history of colonialism and white supremacy.
Solutions must target the most fundamental reasons for racial inequity rather than fixating solely on short-term programs and policies that might alleviate inequities but leave intact the underlying systems which produced them.
‘Addressing Economic Racism in Canada’s Pandemic Response and Recovery’ is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0
